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Baltacha was developed by the famous coach Valeriy Lobanovskyi from Dynamo Kiev hero and one of the most respected football coaches of the 20th century. He was spotted by the Dynamo boss while still a teenager at the Kharkiv academy of footballing excellence which he had left home to attend at the age of 13 [2]

In 1979 Baltacha played couple of games for Ukraine at the Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR.[3]

His later career was spent in England and Scotland, playing for Ipswich Town and St Johnstone. His debut for Ipswich (in which he scored) was the first time a Soviet international had played in the Football League. He also had a spell as player manager of Inverness Caledonian in the Scottish Highland Football League, and was with Caledonian when they amalgamated with Inverness Thistle and entered the Scottish Football League in 1994 as Inverness Caledonian Thistle.

Baltacha worked as a physical education teacher and tutor at Bacon's College in South East London until 2012, having formerly been a physical education teacher at Geoffrey Chaucer Technology College (Old Kent Road, London) and a coach at the Charlton Athletic academy.[4] Since 2012 Sergei Baltacha works as Professional Development Phase Lead Coach at the Charlton Athletic FC Academy [5]

Their daughter Elena was a professional tennis player. She died on 4 May 2014, of liver cancer, aged 30.

Baltacha was married to Oksana.[8] His and Olga's son, Sergei Jr, was also a professional footballer, who played for St Mirren and Millwall as well as being capped at U-21 level for Scotland.

Although he was born in the Ukrainian part of the Soviet Union, Baltacha regards himself to be multi-national. His career achievements resulted in him being inducted into the Viktor Leonenko Hall of Fame in March 2012. Baltacha has stated in interview "I’m a citizen of the Soviet Union, but I love Ukraine. As for now, I’ve been in the United Kingdom for over 23 years, it’s my home. But I still go back to Ukraine regularly. It’s a beautiful country with good, kind people. I want to see it become more like European countries. But, I don’t think it has to lose ties with Russia, we are similar people, it’s in our blood.”[9]